Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 14.djvu/163

never be able to finish three treatises, that have lain by me several years, and want nothing but correction. My lord B. said in his postscript that you would go to Bath in three days; we since heard that you were dangerously ill there, and that the newsmongers gave you over. But a gentleman of this kingdom, on his return from Bath, assured me he left you well, and so did some others whom I have forgot. I am sorry at my heart that you are pestered with people who come in my name, and I profess to you, it is without my knowledge. I am confident I shall hardly ever have occasion again to recommend, for my friends here are very few, and fixed to the freehold, from whence nothing but death will remove them. Surely I never doubted about your Essay on Man; and I would lay any odds, that I would never fail to discover you in six lines, unless you had a mind to write below or beside your self on purpose. I confess I did never imagine you were so deep in morals, or that so many new and excellent rules could be produced so advantageously and agreeably in that science, from any one head. I confess in some few places I was forced to read twice; I believe I told you before what the duke of Dorset said to me on that occasion, how a judge here, who knows you, told him, that on the first reading those essays, he was much pleased, but found some lines a little dark: on the second, most of them cleared up, and his pleasure increased: on the third, he had no doubt remained, and then he admired the whole. My lord Bolingbroke's attempt of reducing metaphysicks to intelligible sense and usefulness, will be a glorious undertaking; and as I never knew him fail in any thing he attempted, if he

had